You Too
What brings them together is not a story, but the loss of their own.
There is the same night in their memory. It is inky and unknown for both, only lit by a rare handful of stars. Other than that, in every way, they belong to different universes — nowhere else than here, a quiet place of the mind, they could have met.
The lanky man in red has a glass mask. It is smooth to the touch, just like the glossy pinnacles of the towers she loves so well. His face, on the other hand, is made by sharp angles — its definition, in the movements and shapes, makes up for the eyes she cannot see.
The little princess is soft and curious. She has grabby hands that take him by surprise, even after the strangeness of his own long night; he sees raven hair and the folds of a milky dress, waving to him in the wind, hypnotic.
They share many questions in their silence, as their worlds overlap in red and blue. It is a touch of parallel souls — somehow identical, yet never bound to meet. If not in a dream.
The distance between them is both nothing and infinite — it is all true, in the right perspective. His life rushes to an end, hers lies trapped in time; but both are waiting to go on, and are marked by vast, unscathed loneliness.
She wraps warm fingers around those of a ghost, and the difference does not matter. They are connected in their hopeful wait. She lowers her head, and the song of her heart echoes his own — the fear of a child who has made mistakes, who knows nothing, who has lost too much and wants to make things right.
In this void of time and space, patient, the man decides to accompany her steps. His own can no longer lead him far, in any case.
He smiles.
At some point in their journey, something awaits that neither has found yet. It is the same treasure, lost to different things — they walk towards it like one, with baby steps, for there is no point in worrying. They will get there.
On the other end of the night, in the sunrise, they see their true selves dance in playful gratitude.
[Spoiler-free ficlet inspired by a very spoilery and adorable fanart by laughingpinecone/laughingmango. She had the idea of putting our amnesiac babies together. Don't look at the art unless you have played both games.]